President Donald Trump fiercely condemned anti-Semitism in response to a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday.
“This was an anti-Semitic act,” Trump said in response to reports of eleven deaths at the Tree of Life Synagogue. “You wouldn’t think this would be possible in this day and age, but we never seem to learn from the past.”
The president invited a pastor and a rabbi to offer a prayer at the beginning of his speech at the Future Farmers of America convention in Indiana.
“Anti-Semitism and the widespread persecution of Jews represents one of the ugliest and darkest features of human history,” he said.
Trump acknowledged that the event occurred at a baby-naming ceremony at the synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath day.
The gunman reportedly shouted: “All Jews must die!” after he entered the synagogue.
Trump stated that anti-Semitism should never be tolerated in America.
“The vile hate-filled poison of anti-Semitism must be condemned and confronted everywhere and anywhere it appears,” he said.
The president said that he spoke with the mayor of Pittsburgh and Governor Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, promising to investigate the attack and to pray for the victims.
“Today, with one unified voice, we condemn the historic evil of anti-Semitism and every other form of evil,” he said. “And, unfortunately, evil comes in many forms.”
He urged Americans to rediscover a common unity on shared values, despite political disagreements.
“It doesn’t mean that we can’t fight hard and be strong and say what’s on our mind, but we have to always remember those elements of love and dignity and respect,” Trump said.
He also praised law enforcement for their swift response to the shooting, acknowledging that some officials were wounded severely during the attack.
“Our hearts go out to the wounded law enforcement officers in Pittsburgh,” he said. “Very badly wounded and very brave.”
An NBC reporter who interviewed one of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers, and who admitted to sitting on evidence that two of his accusers were not credible, is now trying to defend herself and her network.
It’s not working.
Kate Snow interviewed Julie Swetnick on Oct. 1. Swetnick claimed in a sworn statement to her attorney, Michael Avenatti, that she saw Kavanaugh act aggressively toward women, spike punch with drugs to get women drunk, and line up outside of rooms to gang-rape women. On NBC, Swetnick walked back her most important claims: She didn’t see Kavanaugh spike any punch and she never saw men lined up to gang-rape women (they were just “huddled by doors.”
Kavanaugh said he doesn’t even know Swetnick. One of the people Swetnick named to corroborate her story also didn’t remember anyone with that name.
Snow opened her interview by acknowledging the network couldn’t verify any of Swetnick’s claims. Yet the network still chose to give her a 13-minute primetime interview.
Producers of The Simpsons have announced that their long-running Indian character, Apu, will be written out of the show due to increased complaints that he reflects an insulting racial stereotype, NME reported.
The nearly 30-year-old animated sitcom has featured Kwik-E-Mart owner Apu Nahasapeemapetilon as a wise-cracking, and sometimes clueless, father of eight children.
Apu first appeared in 1990, early in the series. But criticism has been mounting over the depiction of the character. With the character being a convenience store owner and sporting a heavy accent, it has been deemed a “racist” depiction of an Indian-American. People of Indian heritage have slammed the heavily accented cartoon character for reinforcing stereotypes they insist can lead to bullying and self-loathing.
The series has acknowledged that the character has become a problem. Indeed, The Simpsons did make a small attempt to wink and nod at the issue with the Apu character. In the April episode titled, “No Good Read Goes Unpunished,” one segment dealt with the stereotypes that were once accepted in society but have become problematic today.
In the episode, Lisa Simpson tells her mother, Marge, “Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?” As Lisa delivered the line, a framed photo of Apu is seen sitting on a bedstand next to her.
But now, that problem is about to disappear into thin air. And some are not happy with the plans.
Indie film producer and Indian-American Adi Shankar attempted to raise fan support for a Simpsons episode that would deal with the show’s “Apu problem.”
However, that idea is set to die, as Shankar has reported, “I’ve verified from multiple sources now: They’re going to drop the Apu character altogether. They aren’t going to make a big deal out of it, or anything like that, but they’ll drop him altogether just to avoid the controversy.”
Shankar, however, says the sudden disappearance of a near 30-year-old character is a mistake. “If you are a show about cultural commentary and you are too afraid to comment on the culture, especially when it’s a component of the culture you had a hand in creating, then you are a show about cowardice,” Shankar said.
Shankar concluded that just dropping the character without explanation is “a step backward” for race relations.
Some actors on the series have also expressed unease with the Apu character.
Only a few months ago, Hank Azaria, the actor who has voiced the character since its debut, announced that he would no longer provide Apu’s voice for the animated series.
During an April appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Azaia said he hoped producers of the series would make a change over the character.
“I’m perfectly willing and happy to step aside or help transition it into something new. I really hope that’s what The Simpsons does,” Azaria proclaimed.
Azaria added that if anyone was bullied because of Apu, he would be mortified. He said he only wanted to “spread laughter and joy with” the character.
“I’ve given this a lot of thought, and as I say my eyes have been opened,” Azaria exclaimed:
I think the most important thing is we have to listen to South Asian people, Indian people in this country, when they talk about what they feel and how they think about this character, and what their American experience of it has been … Listening to voices means inclusion in the writers’ room. I really want to see Indian, South Asian writers in the writers’ room, not in a token way, but genuinely informing whatever new direction this character may take, including how it is voiced or not voiced.
Comedian and Indian-American Hari Kondabolu, also recently expressed his distaste over the character with a documentary titled, The Problem With Apu. Kondabolu said that growing up as an Indian in the U.S., he was often made fun of by other children with the Apu catchphrase: “Thank you, come again.”
“Sure, growing up in New York City everyone tries to be funny. If you grow up there, you learn to make jokes and how to make comebacks, but it’s hard to counter an accent – what’s your comeback for an accent?,” Kondabolu told the BBC late last year.
On Thursday, President Trump signed the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act (S.1595), sponsored by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL). The bill increases sanctions on the U.S.-designated terrorist organization known as Hezbollah by restricting the activity of their external financial support systems.
The text of the legislation reads in part:
The author, Mayowa Aina, recalled growing up and seeing a lot of decorations but never realized how “racist” they are.
“But while terrifying, it never occurred to me that any of those decorations might have racist undertones,” the author wrote.
She probably never realized they were “racist” because they aren’t. The people who put up the decorations didn’t have racist intentions and the people viewing the decorations don’t perceive them as racist.
“Hanging anything with a noose conjures up a legacy that continues to haunt us today,” Aina wrote.
Is the left getting too politically correct?
She cited Tananarive Due, a “black horror scholar” at the University of California, who said, “Just because it’s Halloween doesn’t mean that we can forget the visual impact of lynching imagery.”
I think it’s safe to say that nobody except for racists and people looking to be offended perceive hanging skeleton decorations as racist lynchings.
Hangings have a history that goes far beyond the terrible lynchings of the reconstruction era.
How many “wild west” movies have had cruel judges who use hanging as a means of execution for renegade cowboys?
Even the popular movie series Pirates of the Caribbean had a hanging scene.
If you want to be safe, the author offered an alternative use for the skeleton decoration.
“She suggests using spider webs instead of rope,” Aina wrote. “You could even sit the skeleton up in a tree so it looks like someone died and decomposed while sitting in that spot.”
I think the author is trying to tell you to throw the skeleton up in a tree on a dark Halloween night so nobody can see it. If nobody can see the skeleton then nobody can get offended.
A new report from the Government Accountability Institute reveals that welfare programs have often been used to fund terrorism at home or abroad. The family of the Boston bombers, in particular, took over $100,000 in public assistance.
In fact, the report seems to indicate that the brothers may have learned the strategy from an al-Qaida magazine that inspired them to make the bomb they used to kill three people and injure over 200 more.
“The Associated Press reported that both (Tsarnaev) brothers had also been ardent readers of jihadist websites and extremist propaganda,” the report reads, referring to the two brothers who committed the Boston bombing.
“Tamerlan Tsarnaev in particular had devoured issues of Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication produced by al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate. Investigators focused much of their attention on an infamous Inspire article called ‘Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,’ which offered detailed instructions for making a bomb inside a pressure cooker—precisely the type the Tsarnaev brothers used.”
“The terrorist magazine had in a previous issue urged aspiring jihadis in the West to use public assistance programs to fund their extremist activities. A 2011 Inspire article called ‘The Ruling on Dispossessing the Disbelievers Wealth in Dar Al-Harb’ encouraged those living in the non-Muslim world to ‘steal money from disbelievers’ in the same way as living off the land by ‘hunting and wood gathering.’ Quoting Anwar al-Awlaki, then the group’s leader, the article declared, ‘Muslims should seek the wealth of the disbelievers as a form of jihad,’ insisting that they should “spend the money on the cause of jihad and not on (themselves).’”
Do you think that welfare programs are being abused?
“Inspire” was hardly alone in promoting this sort of thing. According to the report, outspoken radical cleric Anjem Choudary called the benefits program in his native United Kingdom a “Jihad seeker’s allowance.”
However, the majority of the benefits theft that the report focused on is from the United States, where money can be diverted overseas. In terms of food stamp, or SNAP, benefits, millions of dollars can often be moved to countries where terrorism is a serious problem, including one case where over $1.4 million in fraudulently obtained food stamp money was diverted to Somalia.
“Even with continuing SNAP trafficking investigations, tracing the funds from cases suspected of having links to terrorism remains difficult for financial regulators,” the report reads.
“In a 2001 report after the Sept. 11 attacks, the US Treasury Department identified hawalas (informal money transfer agents) as a ‘fast and cost-effective method for worldwide remittance of money or value, particularly for persons who may be outside the reach of the traditional financial sector … It is therefore difficult to accurately measure the total volume of financial activity associated with the system, however, it is estimated that the figures are in the tens of billions of dollars, at a minimum. Officials in Pakistan, for example, estimate that more than $7 billion flow into the nation through hawala channels each year.’”
“In 2005, the US State Department also noted use of hawalas and underground banking by both terrorists and traffickers, because such systems involve ‘trusted networks that move funds and settle accounts with little or no paper records.’ Some terrorist groups, the report said, also use Islamic banks to move money. Islamic banks operate within Islamic law, which prohibits the payment of interest and certain other activities. Such banks have multiplied across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and, since the 1970s, in Europe as well. While these banks might voluntarily comply with anti-money laundering regulations, there is often no control measure to assure they do so consistently.”
This form of “welfare jihad” isn’t necessarily germane to the Tsarnaevs, either.
“One example of this is the case of Adnan Fazeli, a refugee from Iran, who settled in Freeport, Maine with his wife and children,” the report stated.
“Fazeli worked several jobs between 2009 and 2013, before he mysteriously boarded a plane to Turkey without his family. He never returned. Documents unsealed in 2016 show what happened to him: Fazeli joined ISIS as a jihadi; he was killed in fighting with Lebanese government forces in January of 2015. During his four years living in Maine, he and his family had lived partially on federal and state welfare programs, supplementing small, sporadic income Fazeli earned as a translator. He also apparently spent a great deal of time self-radicalizing, watching extremist Islamist videos on the internet.”
Then there was Waad Ramadan Alwan, an Iraqi refugee who was connected to Islamic State terrorism by a fingerprint found on an IED. Before his arrest, he had received multiple forms of public assistance. Law enforcement officials found that he had “allegedly supported efforts to kill U.S. troops in Iraq, first by participating in the construction and placement of improvised explosive devices in Iraq and, more recently, by attempting to ship money and weapons from the United States to insurgents in Iraq.”
“Given this history, it is not surprising that terrorists and their acolytes would later target SNAP — with its explosive growth, electronic benefits distribution, ease of access, and lax enforcement problems. In some cases, as we have seen, terrorist supporters were able to operate with near-impunity for years without drawing attention from fraud investigators,” the report concludes.
“Combined with SNAP’s administrative and enforcement shortcomings, its vulnerability and exploitation by those seeking to harm Americans at home and abroad make it a prime candidate for legislative and executive branch reform.”
And one hopes that reform happens in a hurry.
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When I uploaded my first video onto YouTube one year ago, I entitled it “Mom, Dad, I’m a Conservative.”
It was a two-minute satirical stab at the social exiling that many Americans face when they announce their conservatism to friends and family.
Soon thereafter I would discover that for black Americans, the punishment that awaits is far worse than any social exile: it is a full-court social lynching.
Search the name of any prominent black conservative and peruse the words written by liberal journalists:
I have been branded a self-hating black, Nazi-sympathizer and rather astonishingly — a white supremacist.
The underlying sentiments are clear; black people are meant to think and act within the confines of what white liberals deem acceptable.
But while in the past the threat of slander has worked to lag the spreading of black conservatism, over this last year, I have observed something of the opposite effect.
In fact, what many have misdiagnosed as political tension between two ideologically disparate groups is actually something far greater, far more deep-rooted, and much more likely to alter the trajectory of this country as we know it.
Across America, black people are beginning to question political orthodoxy. We have been quietly building an ecosystem of free thinkers and at long last, the intellectual dam is breaking.
This unique moment will come to be known as BLEXIT: the black exit from the Democrat party.
For decades, the black community has been in an emotionally abusive relationship with the Democrat Party. Our fidelity to leftist politicians coupled with our false belief that a larger government might facilitate solutions, has led to the overall collapse of our families, neighborhoods, and incidentally, our futures.
BLEXIT is a national movement of minorities that have awakened to the truth. It is for those who have taken an objective look at our decades-long allegiance to the left and asked ourselves “what do we have to show for it?”
The media has betrayed our focus. They have learned the value of our untethered emotionality and have chosen to emphasize certain topics in an effort to suspend our rational thinking. This is why in 2016, the 16 unarmed black men shot and killed by police officers took headline-precedent over the approximate 330,000 black babies aborted each year.
This is why the topic of illegal alien children being separated at the border earned excessive coverage, while the 70% black single motherhood rate — a tragedy encouraged by our government welfare programs — is ignored.
The investment into our permanent state of outrage is opportune; it inspires a predictable outcome at the polls.
Until now.
Beyond anything else, BLEXIT is a chant of freedom. It is a chorus of voices from across the country whose hearts are exploding with the realization that we are more than the color of our skin.
We are also more than a voting bloc.
We are Americans first and foremost and we will work to piece back together our broken communities — absent overreaching government structures, absent hand-outs, and alongside our American brothers and sisters.
The tides are shifting. New leaders are emerging to help steer open minds into the uncharted possibilities of our futures.
We need all of America to join us in this fight. No matter your skin color, we need you to take up metaphorical arms against the Democrat party. First, visit our website, BLEXIT.com, where you will find the hard truths about the bigoted racism within the Democrat party. Second, spread the word. Your voice matters to those who are looking to make an “exit” from the bondage of the Democrat party. Finally, stand for truth. This battle will be one of the most consequential culture wars in American history. Your support is needed to allow us to arm the next generation with the facts they need to be free.
BLEXIT is our long-overdue renaissance — and there isn’t an article written from the depths of the hell that can stop it. VISIT BLEXIT
What has ceding support for six decades to the Democratic Party done for black Americans?
That’s the question 29-year-old conservative firebrand Candace Owens says haunted her one February afternoon. The Turning Point USA communications director was standing backstage at the annual conservative convention CPAC in Washington D.C., when she heard British politician Nigel Farage deliver a prime-time speech about how he helped lead the fight for Britain’s exit — or Brexit — from the European Union.
“Oh my God,” Owens recalls saying to herself at that moment, “we need a Blexit.”
“Black people need to exit the Democratic Party,” Owens told me in a phone interview in early October.
Courtesy Candace Owens/Photo by Mike Lerner
While so many black Americans have reaped the social and economic benefits of mainstream American life, Owens said, there are still millions of us trapped in nearly unlivable inner cities that are suffocated by crime, and awash with shoddy schools and hopelessness.
What’s the connective tissue tying many of these declining communities together, Owens asked: they’re all run by Democrats.
“I had this concept in my mind that made sense. But I needed to move the idea from Candace’s brain to a room full of my peers,” Owens told me.
She began organizing a retreat, which would put nearly two dozen of the most influential black conservatives in one room to discuss how a Blexit would look.
“And then Kanye happened,” Owens said of the Grammy-winner’s April 21 tweet. “We had to put everything on ice.”
“I love the way Candace Owens thinks,” Kanye West wrote with his trademark bluntness. The short missive prompted Owens to challenge West to help her “wake up the black community.”
“It was a blessing in disguise because there were so many people paying attention to me and my message,” Owens recalled. “We also needed to know how serious Kanye was about really fixing this issues in our communities.”
Kanye West and Candace Owens (Instagram/realcandaceowens)
More than a month passed. In that time West had turned the entertainment establishment on its head with his unapologeticsupport for President Donald Trump. By June, Owens had reached rock star status. With the Chicago crooner’s backing, she moved ahead with the black influencers retreat.
“There is a real loneliness to being black and conservative. But that weekend was energizing and affirming,” she told me of the three-day confab in Phoenix, Arizona. “I realized, ‘Oh my God I’m not alone.’”
“We locked down the domain,” Owens said. The idea, she explained, was to “marry this movement to social media. We needed an online platform that could show and prove to black people that they don’t have to be Democrats and that they are not alone.”
“BLEXIT is a frequency for those who have released themselves from the political orthodoxy. It is a rebellion led by Americans wishing to disrupt the simulation of fear,” the website reads.
“BLEXIT is a renaissance,” it says. “It is our formal declaration of independence.”
blexit.com
The “inspiration” page on the slickly designed website is rife with videos of black men and women from across the country detailing their personal journeys to political and ideological independence.
“There’s an old saying that if you’re black, you were born a Democrat. Sadly, there are so many of us who truly think that way,” Owens told me. “I joined Turning Point because they were disrupting that narrative. Speaking on college campuses across the country, I realized there were so many people who were ready to be freed from liberalism and the Democratic Party. But there was never a nucleus. So I decided to bring all of this energy together and power this thing.”
The site’s “inconvenient truths” section dissects the hidden history of how, for decades, the Democratic Party used the Ku Klux Klan to intimidate, terrorize, and murder black and white Republicans attempting to champion civil rights for blacks. It reveals President Lyndon B. Johnson’s sinister motivation for supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it chronicles Planned Parenthood founder Margret Sanger’s secret plan to exterminate blacks through abortion on demand.
blexit.com
Owens recruited Turning Point’s urban outreach chief Brandon Tatum, a former officer with the Tuscon Arizona Police Department, to help drive the Blexit campaign.
“I’m ready for a Blexit because I’m tired of seeing our people pigeonholed into one political party, which has spent decades telling the lie that liberal policies of higher taxes and handouts lead to prosperity,” Tatum told me.
“Look at your communities, look at the failure and the corruption and ask: what are we doing black people?” he continued. “What do we want to be and where do we want to go as a people? These so-called progressive politicians don’t care about us. And now they’re trying to give the right to work and vote and healthcare to people who are in this country illegally.”
Tatum, who voted for Barack Obama in 2012, says his political conversion came in waves.
“I was a cop for over six years — some SWAT, I was a general instructor at the academy training new recruits,” he said. “I was surrounded by conservatives at the department. It was there that I was confronted with the idea that my Christian faith didn’t align with my political values.”
It was also the culmination, he said, of President Obama sending Department of Justice officials to Michael Brown’s funeral, Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protests, and his experience being called racist slurs by “white liberals” during a chaotic Trump rally in Tuscon that led Brandon to abandon the Democratic Party for good.
“I loved being a cop. For a long time, I couldn’t imagine not being a cop,” Tatum told me. “But I felt like God was calling me to do something more. And I could no longer remain silent about the lies the media was telling about the police. I needed to speak out about how the Democrats and their allies in the media were demonizing our law enforcement.”
Courtesy Candace Owens/Photo by Mike Lerner
Owens also enlisted the help of David Harris Jr., a bi-racial 43-year-old, California native and author of Why I couldn’t Stay Silent.
“If we can save just one black life — who could be a catalyst to save another — then this will have all been worth it,” Harris told me in a phone interview. “Blexit says ‘Yes, you do have permission to question the status quo,’ to ask ‘why are we settling for less from our political leaders?’ Just presenting the idea that blacks don’t have to be Democrats is worth its weight in gold.”
Of course, the idea of black people shifting course and throwing their support behind another political party is not new.
In March 2015, ESPN star personality Stephen A. Smith spoke at the Impact Symposium at Vanderbilt University and said, “What I dream is that for one election, just one, every black person in America vote Republican.”
“Black folks in America are telling one party, ‘We don’t give a damn about you.’ They’re telling the other party ‘You’ve got our vote.” Smith continued. “Therefore, you have labeled yourself ‘disenfranchised’ because one party knows they’ve got you under their thumb. The other party knows they’ll never get you and nobody comes to address your interest.’”
And it was Smith who defended Family Feud host Steve Harvey after he met with President-elect Trump in January to discuss partnering with the Ben Carson-led Department of Housing and Urban Development in an effort to restore America’s inner cities.
“That’s the real work of Blexit,” Owens told me. “Resurrecting our communities and saving cities from Democratic Party rule, which has only brought destruction and misery.”
blexit.com
Asked what she would say to her detractors on the Left, particularly those in the civil rights establishment, in the media, and academia, Candace says, “We’re not trying to combat the civil rights establishment. We are going around them with an honest message of hope and truth for the world to see. When people are presented with the truth, the establishment will fall apart.”
“I anticipate outrage from the intellectual frauds like Michael Eric Dyson and puppets like Al Sharpton,” Candace continued. “They avoid the real debate about how Democrats and their liberal ideas have destroyed black lives. But they can’t hide from Blexit.”
“We can’t all be coons, right?” Owens asked. “They can’t call us all Uncle Toms.”
Tatum put it bluntly, “The black civil rights establishment is a lost cause.”
“Their leaders, not the rank-and-file, simply don’t care,” he elaborated. “They cash checks to keep the legacy of racism alive. It’s going to be a fight and it’s going to take time to wake people up. But there will be athletes and entertainers and everyday Americans who will resist and there will be many others who will join Blexit.”
Owens was quick to reject the idea that Blexit is one big voter registration drive for the Republican Party.
“The Republican Party helped free us. Then they fought the Jim Crow Democrats for the next hundred years fighting for our most basic Constitutional rights,” Owens told me. “But the GOP gave up on the black vote in the 1960s. Today, there have been GOP donors that have shown interest in sponsoring events — specifically for black outreach. So, the sky’s the limit.”
“Blexit won’t be a voter registration drive for the Republican Party,” She continued. “We’re in the business of waking people up. How they choose to vote after they see the truth is up to them. My inkling is that they will question their allegiance to liberalism and to the Democrat agenda.”
Asked what success would look like for Blexit, Owens said, “Let’s look at the voter margins in 2020.”
“It needed to convey the message of a mass exodus,” Candace Owens said of the artwork that would mark black America’s exit, or Blexit, from the “liberal plantation.”
“I created the logo. I spent weeks tinkering with the design, agonizing over the shape, the color,” Owens told me in a phone interview. “I started with a very basic X”
But Owens knew something was missing. “It just wasn’t right. There was this gaping creative chasm,” She said of the artwork.
That’s when she turned to Kanye West — the 21-time Grammy-winner and one of the most influential and successful fashion designers in the world, with whom Owens has developed a close collaborative relationship.
Kanye West and Candace Owens pose in West’s fashion studio. Instagram/realcandaceowens
Indeed, both Owens and Kanye have kicked off a hot conversation that has rocked our culture, spurring a free thinkers movement Candace Owens says is the beating heart of Blexit.
“Me and Kanye had been in constant contact for months. I showed him the Blexit design that I had started to create.” Owens said. “He paused for what felt like ten excruciating minutes, looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘You know the greatest designer of all-time and you didn’t ask me for help?’”
A marketing maven, two-time GQ Most Stylish Man, and the purveyor of the billion-dollar Yeezy apparel and footwear collection brand with Addidas, even Kanye found it a bit of a challenge trying to solve the creative mystery behind the Blexit design he wanted to present to the world. But it was a worthy challenge for one of the fashion industry’s most prolific influencers; one that took he and Owens halfway across the globe to conquer.
“Like me, Kanye felt like something was missing from the design,” Owens told me. “The man is a creative force of nature. And just like that, the next thing I knew, I was on a plane flying from Philadelphia to Africa.”
Rapper Kanye West, left, hands a pair of sneakers to a child during a visit to the Uganda Women’s Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO) Children’s Village in Masulita, outside Kampala, in Uganda Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018. (AP Photo/Stephen Wandera)
“It’s hard to put into words what that level of innovative energy felt like. We were overwhelmed with inspiration as soon as we landed in Uganda,” Owens recalls of her and Kanye’s visit with the people of the East African nation.
It was there that Kanye met with President Yoweri Museveni, visited with orphans who didn’t have shoes to wear.
“There was a real rooted tribal vibe and hora around us,” said Owens, who arrived the next day. “That feeling of going back to our homeland, being in Africa — the feeling of family and togetherness that we as a people have moved away from — motivated Kanye and inspired what came to be the Blexit design.”
Rapper Kanye West shakes hands after taking a mobile photo of a child during a visit to the Uganda Women’s Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO) Children’s Village in Masulita, outside Kampala, in Uganda Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018. (AP Photo/Stephen Wandera)
Kanye put Owens in contact with a designer who had taken the X logo and drew each letter to take on the shape of a human figure.
“The Blexit design reflects the deep-seated humanity and harmony we felt in Uganda,” Candace Owens explained. “It’s that humanity you see in the artwork. The bodies represent us all bending and binding together as a people to bring healing to our communities and real lasting change. That’s what this movement represents. That’s what was missing from the logo. That’s what we found in Africa.”
